Johnson faces backlash for ‘failure to act’ over
Chris Pincher warnings
Parliamentary staffers and Tory MPs say allegations of
sexual misconduct were not acted on by whips
Rowena
Mason and Rajeev Syal
Sun 3 Jul
2022 20.22 BST
Boris
Johnson is facing a backlash over the promotion of his ally Chris Pincher, as a
group of Conservative parliamentary staffers accused the prime minister of a
“failure to act on warnings” of sexual misconduct by his MPs.
As new
claims emerged about Pincher, who resigned as deputy chief whip over
allegations that he groped two men in a London club, No 10 continued to insist
that Johnson was unaware of any “specific” warnings until last week.
But a
whips’ office source acknowledged on Sunday that a “matter” relating to Pincher
had in fact been reported to them during the February reshuffle. The source had
previously denied receiving any complaints or warnings – formal or informal –
about his conduct.
Johnson is
likely to face questions in parliament this week about what he knew about
allegations concerning Pincher, after five further reports of alleged
misconduct emerged over the weekend, including groping Tory MPs. Pincher denies
all the allegations against him.
The warning
to the whips’ office in February is believed to have come from a Conservative
MP who was the subject of an unwanted pass from Pincher. A second MP told the
Guardian they had raised allegations of sexual misconduct by Pincher with their
whip, but without making a formal complaint because they were not personally a
victim.
He said he
had told the whips office in February that Pincher should not be in the job
because he could not be trusted with young male staff. “I told a whip what I
thought of Pincher, and that he had a terrible reputation with younger staff
and MPs which had not gone away. That still stands.”
The MP said
they had not made a specific allegation, because that would have resulted in a
full-blown inquiry and he could not guarantee that accusers would come forward.
“I would
not have wanted to have done that without a victim’s express permission. But I
wanted them to know that there were claims out there.”
A third MP
said they had warned senior figures in the party that “Pincher should not be
anywhere near the whips office,” let alone in the deputy role that conferred
responsibility for welfare of MPs as well as discipline.
There were
also reports that Steve Barclay, Johnson’s chief of staff, tried to block
Pincher’s appointment and asked for an investigation by the Cabinet Office’s
propriety and ethics team.
A group of
parliamentary aides, called Conservative Staffers for Change, who previously
wrote to Johnson with their general concerns about sexual misconduct in
Westminster, said on Sunday that the stories now coming out about Pincher “come
as no surprise”.
“His
behaviour was an open secret in Westminster and it is disappointing that this
was not addressed sooner,” they said.
“Having
raised concerns about sexual misconduct with the chief whip, we were
disappointed not only by how long it took to remove the whip from Pincher, but
also at the continued lack of clarity about the PM’s knowledge of his
behaviour.
“We wrote
the letter to the PM raising concerns about illegal sexual misconduct [by those
in power abusing their positions] in May, yet received no response. This is
about more than just the culture in Westminster, it is about the PM’s failure
to act on warnings of serious misconduct from those in government.”
The two
parliamentary staffers representing the group are due to meet Lindsay Hoyle,
the Speaker, this week to “raise our concerns about parliament as a workplace
and how our employment structures can be reformed”.
Conservative
MPs have also been raising their concerns with their whips about why the party
refused to take any allegations about Pincher seriously without a formal
complaint by an alleged victim to the Independent Complaints and Grievance
Scheme.
Anne
Milton, the former Conservative deputy chief whip, told the Guardian: “I feel
very angry that in this day and age this sort of behaviour still goes on …
Victims will come forward if they trust the process and the individual that
they are going to. That person doesn’t have to be in the whips office, just a
senior person with responsibility. And absolutely witnesses should be able to
come forward with complaints. It’s nonsense having a system without that.”
Senior
Conservatives remain adamant that Tory MP Craig Whittaker stepped down as a
whip in February because of outstanding allegations of harassment against
Pincher, despite Whittaker’s denial.
Whittaker,
the MP for Calder Valley, issued a statement to the Halifax Courier on Sunday
saying he had stood down as a whip for health reasons, and not because he
opposed the appointment of Pincher, as was claimed on Saturday.
But one
senior Tory source said: “There is no doubt that Craig was concerned about
Pincher taking up a key role that gave him power over younger MPs, he has told
people that that was the reason. “Are we really supposed to believe that this was
not then passed on to the PM? It is stretching the bounds of credibility.”
Another
younger Tory colleague said: “There were persistent rumours about Chris and how
he behaves when drunk, but there are persistent rumours about most people in
parliament and if you believed all of them we would have no MPs.
“So I was
wary of him but I did not fully believe those rumours because I hadn’t come
across anyone who said they had actually seen him groping anyone or been
groped. Now of course I am saying to myself, ‘should I have said something
before?’. But the reality is that it takes a complaint for other complaints to
come tumbling out.”
On Sunday
night, Labour wrote to Johnson demanding answers about how Pincher came to be
appointed as the deputy chief whip.
In a letter
to the prime minister, Anneliese Dodds, the Labour party chair, him asked why
he was not asking the party to investigate Pincher, unlike the inquiry into
Neil Parish, the Tory MP who resigned for watching pornography in the House of
Commons.
“Only Boris
Johnson could have looked at this guy’s record and thought ‘he deserves a
promotion,’” Dodds said. “Not only that, but by not investigating these
allegations and allowing the former deputy chief whip to keep the Conservative
whip, the prime minister is sending a dangerous signal.
“This prime
minister is clearly happy to sweep sexual misconduct under the carpet in order
to save his own skin. Conservative MPs need to take a long hard look in the
mirror and decide if this is the kind of leader the British people deserve.”
Pincher has
had the whip suspended but Johnson initially held out against this step until a
formal complaint about him was made by a victim to the Independent Complaints
and Grievance Scheme.
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